Sami - A Reminder of Home

The weekend had left me exhausted, but still it felt nice to get back to school after a total of five days of being elsewhere. The curriculum seemed quite clear as well. How ever, the exhaustion along with the new tasks left me at disarray, and during the entirety of Monday I got nothing done. Texturing is the current task at hand, and I have yet to grasp good methods. Later on I started feeling a bit weary and my throat was sore.
Our local friend from the weekend had informed me that I should ask one of our team mates about places to go, and now it's certain that more money will burn if I do go to a journey with her for art books.
All in all I've felt rather useless this week since I've been struck by weakness. Guess it could be some kind of flu. Must fight through it in order to go to Grand Prix. I haven't gotten much done with the project to my own shame because of this, and it has been stressful. Getting the hang of a good workflow has been an issue too. Although I am starting to understand good approaches for Diffuse and Normal maps when texturing. Well, at least I haven't been a complete waste of space due to the concepts I made which are being realized. And now my task mostly consists of making modular dirt.
Friday arrived, and due to the schedule regarding Grand Prix, I wasn't sure if I could keep my word to the merchant at CharaExpo if not today. Thus I gathered a party to travel to the promised land. I shall provide images later, as we will take it upon ourselves to return. There were two additional stores with similar wares right next to the one we went to but didn't have time to see the everything that was available. Albeit I did succeed in my quest, and it was the last figurine of that character that they had. I would be pleased to take my business there again. Assimilation seems to be taking place.
Browsing through the displays took me some time even if I settled for one purchase alone. We decided to leave at the closing hours and hunger took over. I spotted a poltry meal restaurant named KFC and half of our group settled with that choice while the other went for Subway. Weird enough, amidst the chicken-filled meal there was a small portion of something that reminded me of home: a small container of mashed potatoes with brown sauce. The sauce even had a slightly oversaturated taste of black pepper, just how I made it back home. To imagine that I would encounter something like that in a place that is known in, but still hasn't reached my homeland. The returning trek home took its toll as we went by to get groceries, so I would turn all that unhealthy energy into concentrated salt that pushed it's way out through the pores on my skin.
Grand Prix approaches.

Expo

Lo and behold our joined post. Images you shall find below the texts.

Teemu's quest for geekdom

Sami will have a wall of text regarding the expo so I’ll try not to drag on subjects for too long. I have actually never been in a convention before, not sure why. This would be big so I wanted to get the most out of it. I firmly decided to not regret anything and thus I didn't: it’s that easy.

The place was crowded. I knew it would be yet I was still astonished by the enormous mob of geeks slobbering for the contents of their Mecca. I also wanted to get myself some keepsakes of the event but I didn't really know what I was looking for. It would have been fine if I could carefully check out every booth and decide what to get but thanks to our local friend I got warned that the merchandise sells out really fast, especially the popular ones. As I hadn't got the time to search for what I wanted the most I had to secure at least something in the way before it was too late: needless to say, the method wasn't the healthiest possible for my wallet, but I had already decided to have no regrets.

I've never really cared too much about figurines, but they were the first things that came to my mind and the first ones to sell out so I started looking for some depicting characters from shows I really liked as I didn't really want to use a lot of money for a character I cannot connect to. My obvious target was Haruhi, but to my surprise there didn't seem to be almost any merchandise from the series. I settled for a figurine that I liked but wasn't super excited about it. Afterwards I could search for more with at least some insurance. Eventually I did find one (1) figurine, or indeed any kind of merchandise, of Haruhi; too bad it was mediocre at best. I bought it anyway, praise the fandom!

For the rest of the day I roamed the booths and places looking for something interesting as well as simply enjoying the event. There was a lot of cosplay and it did nothing but escalate as the day grew longer. After we came back from lunch everybody with a costume that takes preparation had finished them and the sight of all of it was breathtaking. Sami had taken my phone for the sake of actually getting more than, like, four photos of the event. As a result I had him take pictures of pretty much every time I got moderately interested in something (read, often), maybe I should have become a producer after all.

The more interesting events in the expo consisted of Japanese show-wrestling and a huge trading card game tournament area. The wrestling was amusing in its own over-the-top way but it was far too scripted for my liking. I was hoping to get to play some Magic in the card-game-area, but wasn't surprised by the fact that mtg had little place in a place like this. Instead the game of the day was Cardfight!! Vanguard, the trading card game. I am NOT going to take up another tcg, so I didn't really delve into it, but the tcg-focus was seen in the booths as well, for there were a lot of card sleeves, playmats etc. that work just as fine in Magic.

Wallpapers/art/whatever-you-want-to-call-them had probably the best quality- price ratio in the event. This was especially true in the second day when artists were more desperate to sell them off and they were really affordable. Aside from the figurines, mtg-related stuff and art, I looted random accessories, a canvas and a shirt that radiates manliness.

As for what the future holds, I haven’t eaten the ghost pepper wings yet. Also our next weekend will be quite a blast as well, I am sure, as we participate (not in the main event) in Grand-Prix. Hype!

Sami - Awakened

The slight exhaustion brought by the three day marathon of video games didn't make it's way through a good nights sleep. I prepared myself for the upcoming journey with a luxurious breakfast of noodle soup made using our brand new electric kettle. CharaExpo would be located quite a ways away and we would be meeting our flatmate engineer's colleague at the expo station. We walked in the warm dawn through the campus of our school, heading towards the metro station on the commonly traversed path in the beautiful city adorned with it's common, seemingly exotic trees planted all round the busy streets and roads.

I had prepared myself for the upcoming event, being my first time in such an environment, not to mention this particular adventure takes place on the edge of the globe. I was sure to spend money, and to possibly regret my spending later on.

We made way for dozens of minutes standing in the hollow, bleeping rail caterpillar filled to the brim with people, transferring to ever more colourful groups along the way. Finally arriving to our destination four of us, that's two engineers, Yours Truly and Teemu, now waiting for our local friend. Contrary to our broken sweat about us being late, he was there over half an hour later than us, apologizing the timing of his arrival.

We now made way to the Expo hall, where we'd pay eight Singaporean Uncles for entry. The warm air made my large body sweat further surely making me a stereotypical sight later on, but once the gates were passed, the cool air within this new contained hub refreshed my mind. A huge mass of people going about the many organized booths, women and men dressed up as familiar characters all round and electronic music with exotic languages filled the hall decorated with a card game tournament area as well as a professional wrestling ring, I felt the need to seek something I had forgotten before.

I started my quest for simple figurines, settling myself in line that went around a section of booths just to grab myself something that I may never find in my homeland. Names of characters filled my mind as I looked at the models on display. The laws on certain content in Singapore seemed illusive as many of the dolls shown creep towards that border and perhaps beyond, but still there they were.

I fell victim to the expenses, but I was prepared with my shameful European bank-borrowed wealth. I decided to borrow a better phone since Teemu didn't have a habit of taking photos, and I tried to document our day the best I could. I didn't take photos of myself or the group I was with however, partially due to my dislike of photos taken of me and mostly due my own stupidity, Batman had convinced me otherwise at one point. After my first purchase and my first dozen photos, not to mention after the few series of anime I've watched recently, something awakened in me and I felt the thirst for more merchandise as the slippery bills tried to crawl out of their safe lodging in my pocket. Throughout the day I went by many booths and spent a lot of time in the creators corner hoarding artwork, figurines and other small merchandise. A lot of things that I didn't even know the origin of, at least yet. As I browsed through trading card sleeves trying to find ones decorated with amusingly lewd images, a character popped in my head and began my quest to find anything of this character from the event. I grasped a few sleeves and started to go around different booths asking for items referring to this character sadly to no avail. However, a friendly man behind a counter mentioned that they may have the thing I'm looking for at their store, but didn't bring any to the event. I started a bombardment of inquiries if he'd be here the next day and if he'd pass through their store after sundown or before dawn, he said he'll see what he can do and gave me his business card. I had hope for tomorrow.

The structure of time seemed to change as I indulged myself in the many joys of the event: watching wrestlers do their rehearsed exotic dances, hearing out creators of shows talk about things while the seemingly afraid security asked me not to take photographs in this area, watching different card games play out and finding many characters both unknown and familiar and both alive and sculpted. Doppelgängers in the many forms of Hatsune Miku was a common sight. Our group shattered and reformed many times as each of us walked about finding our own cup of tea.

At some point in time, in some point of space we gathered together and decided to go for a meal, the meal I showed you earlier in my case. We got out of the hall and ventured a little on the public transportation to have a new food court shown to us. Albeit very typical of the courts seen before, this also had a charm of it's own. Many small kitchens in a tightly packed space serving many different dishes for many different tastes, as was the norm. It wasn't crowded, but there were some people. Then again it is one or the other everywhere in here. I decided to obliterate a bird's walking mechanism while others settled for other dishes. Our local friend introduced us to some additional treats, salmon with soy and wasabi. We returned this favour by handing him our precious ammonium chloride flavoured treats, salmiak. The reaction was mixed I'd say, as his eyebrows wiggled in a rapid frequency as he chewed down these questionable black diamonds.

Once we would return home with full hands and spacier pockets, we had already separated from our local guide. With a tired body and mind I drifted towards our home-for-now and settled to rest and prepare for tomorrow, while an engineer succumbed to temporal madness much to the confusion of myself and a few others. Such is the way of the Eastern winds.

The next day was bittersweet. I managed to grab more artwork, but while the friendly merchant was located in the same booth as the day before, he hadn't gone back to bring the goods I had desired. He spotted me from a distance and was already distraught realizing I kept my word, and his apology seemed sincere when I said he'd know what I was going to ask. Thus I have two quests: Turtle soup and this merchant's store. Seems it is in a convenient place with potential for pleasant photos, so that is fine by me. It also was definitely a business scheme by him, whether his words were sincere or not. All in all the day was more calm. There was less people around, cheaper prices and we stuck our ground for a shorter time. We had to make a re-entry due to my own thoughtlessness how ever, as I had left an important blueprint to a booth. Luckily the people there were kind enough to hold on to it in case I would return and the recovery was successful with an exchange of a few words.

As the day turned to dusk, new schemes were created for next weekend as we'd head for Grand Prix. And as of this writing, I do not regret my spending as much as I had anticipated. In fact, I feel I should have grabbed a few more items that I passed. Perhaps the merchant has some irresistible items among his wares, and I do not doubt this.

Images

Note: These images are not meant for commercial use. All characters and products under copyright belong to their rightful owners. The only intellectual property held by the Author of this blog is of the photos themselves. If you feel a photo should be removed from the blog, please contact us.
These photos are few of many. The rest of the photos may be viewed in a compilation that I will share on this post later.

Booths and general view:

Activities;

Cosplay:

Figurine examples:

Loot:

Sami - Prelude to Expo

Mind the short post this time. I believe after this post I may start writing more free form about everything that goes on, some thoughts and miscellaneous stuff. I'll try to take notes about various things to make the texts a bit more lively instead of just telling plain facts, and I won't be making scheduled writing.

As for this week, The beginning was mainly preparation for a presentation where we'd showcase our project and take feedback. After that was done, we made some basic plans and us exchange students were gone for the latter half of the week starting Wednesday, since we'd be play testing games made by local developers. Some neat titles, some horrendous ones. Specifically a game that shall not be named made me starve for turtles, and my current quest regarding food is to find turtle soup. Shouldn't be too difficult since some of the local contacts from school are ready to show some places. I sure am ready to take on these ventures. Anyway, we spent three days testing games and I can't say anything under the rulings of confidentiality.

I and Teemu will be writing a joined post about this weekend, since we took part in an event called CharaExpo both Saturday and Sunday, an anime oriented event with lots of things going on. Lots of stuff was bought, plenty of cosplay was seen, and dozens of photos were taken. I wont go in depth about the event and temporal madness just yet.

I ate some chicken feet with noodles as our Expo group was joined by a Nanyang Poly student who wanted to show us a nice food court. Stuff's good, like chewy chicken meat with thick skin and small bones.

Teemu – Finally posts something

Our sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that there is another guy writing this blog and I think it is past time I make an appearance.  I am Teemu, I study game-programming at KUAS. Having finished my first year I fled to Singapore for more studies in terror of upcoming vacation (who wants to not be at school?) I figured I should as well make everything out of exchanging so I applied (and got accepted) to NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in Netherlands for half a year. Only recently did I realize that the exchange period of NHTV was actually a full year, which took me aback for a moment but I can’t complain: looks like a 13 months of invaluable experience for me. Coincidentally, my schedule matches with Sami, so we decided to co-write this blog with him, thus people will hopefully know what to expect should they ponder the possibilities beyond KUAS and so our relatives won’t have to pester us with constant messages for they can read how we are doing. Unfortunately I fell sick right after arriving at Singapore so I write a little late. I will, however, try to scribble down something every week.

About our project

I am not going to reveal much about the actual contents of our project, but I can still tell how we are doing. First of all, we have no courses except the project-course so we are doing it five days a week for twelve weeks. Our school days are rather tiresome: they start at 09.00 and go on until the clock finally ticks 18.00. We have a one hour lunch-break so our days are technically eight hours. In the west we usually calculate the lunch/hour into the working hours. I guess that shows the difference between Asian and European work-culture.

Surprisingly, I got into the same project with Sami and Eero making it three Finns in the project. The rest of the Finns are pretty well separated. We have a total eight members in our team, one of which hasn’t arrived yet. That is a decently large number, certainly greater than any I have worked in Finland. Thus the scope of the project is also quite large, which makes me stress out quite a bit. I am also rather stressed because my co-programmers have studied for two years longer than me, not to mention they’re Asian. It’s not a question for me who is the scrub. Well, truth be told I don’t really care how we do here, what is important is what I can learn in the process. This should be a good boot-camp for NHTV.

About life

The nine Finns that arrived in Singapore were separated into two buildings. I and Sami got four engineers with us, and the six of us now live in one building. Aside from the shortage of personal space living here is pretty nice. Every day is full of the engineers’ lame jokes and we usually spend our evenings doing something together. More often than not, we find ourselves going to the nearby district for more food and groceries after school and after that (usually around 20.00) we are tired as balls. As for weekends, I was sick the first one so that was pretty much me sleeping the whole time.  This weekend we didn’t really do anything exciting: we’re Finns and nerds so we like to hang out indoors after all. That being said, I think we’ll tour the city more later on.

About Singapore

We have been deep into the city once when we got our student passes. We were also given train cards, which can be used for the local trains in Singapore that take you to wherever you want to go in the city, like the underground of Helsinki. The city looks rather beautiful, it is clean and there are gorgeous trees everywhere. That being said, we are practically at the equator so it is hot! It’s 30 degrees Celsius day and night and the air is really humid. What always blows my mind is the fact that it is hot and dark at the same time after the Sun sets around 19.00.

Our campus is quite large and it has pretty much everything we need: Four (I think) “canteens” aka places filled with food courts. There are gyms, swimming pools and courts for tennis/basketball/whatever for those sportier than me. We have also found a grocery shop although it is more like a large kiosk than an actual shop. It seems normal stores are a delicacy here in Singapore, we usually go shopping in the nearby district and have managed to find one grocery store there and even it doesn’t sell, for example, bread. I’d sell my soul for some rye bread.

About food

The food here is cheap. At school we usually get whatever at around 2 euros, and that isn’t cheaper for students like in Finland, it’s like the actual price for the food that is pretty much cooked for you on the spot. Singapore doesn’t have its own traditional food, instead they have a collection of pretty much every county nearby: there’s a lot of Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Indian food. Chicken rice and its many variations is perhaps the most commonly seen meal. Other common sights are ramen-esque soups or actual ramen and barbeque dishes. In almost all cases, there’s either noodles or rice. As for meat, chicken is very popular, “normal meat” exists too and seafood is largely present with a lot more variety than in Finland: squids are not at all uncommon. Of course I don’t always even know what I am eating. The food is really good, though I was expecting it to be spicier. Maybe I just haven’t looked from the right place.

Then the sad part: There is no Pepsi Max, I have to stick with Coke zero for two more months, I don’t know how I will look when I will return. Bread seems to be a delicacy here, I can’t seem to find it anywhere (let alone rye bread, hah), which means that I am often hungry at the apartment. Everything seems to be covered with sugar like it would automatically make stuff taste better (guh).

About future

I have three things planned out for the future. One: the NHTV exchange in the Netherlands, two: Chara expo, a large video game/anime event held next weekend here in Singapore (I’ll blog about it, don’t worry) and eating ghost pepper wings. That’s all, have a nice day!

Sami - Stylus and Squid

As time has passed, it has become clear that there is a certain bureaucratic touch to certain aspects in the school as well. The tools needed are available, but you may need to wait on them for quite some time. “Tomorrow” is the word I heard for almost two weeks. Stress was building up as I fumble about with Autodesk Maya while waiting for a stylus so I could become something more than a shapeless blob taking over one of the working stations. I suggest bringing your own Wacom tablet. I myself didn’t bring too much in the way of electronics so I now need to hold on to my sanity.

We are still waiting for our missing and rather valuable team member, and we should have things in good shape before rather than after his arrival. If he is even destined to arrive at all. Skepticism takes over as I look around on my chair, spinning aimlessly and counting the times I hear the same melody play out outside the project room every now and then. Being a first-year student among third-year foreign students brings it’s own mental strain too.
Towards the end of the week, Thursday, I got my pen and finally can get myself accustomed to the smaller drawing tablet and can finally get to work properly. I will need to remember to return the pen at the end of the project, lest I be chased all the way to Finland for it. Although a detour would be in place since I’d be located elsewhere at the time. Maybe I won’t cause that much of a hassle though.

Either way, getting around doing some concepts as we figure out the art direction for the project.

Foods n' Stuff

On the earlier post I mentioned strange laws and being cautious. This doesn’t mean that you need to be looking over your shoulder every minute. I have yet to see guards or police in public after the airport and most people tend to do whatever works for them at the time.

I have given up on finding milk that tastes “right.” I found something that is probably as close to regular milk as you can get. It might be that it’s not about it being processed too much, but rather too little. I remembered how much Finnish milk is processed in the end. As one would imagine, it was I who is the strange one all along. Even if the milk comes from Australian tree-dwelling flesh-eating spidercows or something similar.

Fruits are cheap and nice, that’s something to grab for snacks. I was tempted to buy some interesting and relatively costly snacks the other day. A roommate of mine grabbed some pringles-esque chips flavored with wasabi, while I was staring at things that I couldn’t comprehend. Fish snacks that from the looks of I couldn’t tell whether it was fish flavored or meant for fish, something that resembled tiny birch trunks, a strange looking mixed bag that had “leather jacket” as the first thing listed on the ingredients, something that looked like liverwurst sitting in the middle of the snack shelf and something flavored with “chilli power.” Must take some of the stuff as homecoming gifts. After all, they cost only a few Singaporean Uncles.

I figured I'll also describe some foods that I try in the cafeterias and around town. Sometimes I'll accompany the descriptions with some really crappy images if I get that system to work. I'll warn you, you're better off seeing just the thumbnails as the image quality is absolutely horrendous. Here's a few for a start.

Hotplate Sotong

A Korean dish. Vegetables and squid served with rice and a sweet hot sauce.

It's served while the oil is still boiling, and the squid are fried to have a crisp surface while retaining a soft center. The vegetables work well with the sauce and the flavor is good. The only issue is that the flavor is gone really quickly due to the burning sensation, and you need to take short breaks in order to get that flavor back when you eat.

Teriyaki Chicken Don, Bandung

A Japanese dish of fried chicken with sweet teriyaki sauce, rice and fresh salad. In addition, a separate broth with a prawn-suited flavor. Good in general, the chicken was soft and the teriyaki worked well with it. The rice was a little plain, but that was easilly fixed with a little bit of flavored soy.

I drank something called Bandung with it, which is a drink well suited as a dessert. Apparently very popular in Malaysia. It tasted like a milkshake with the added flavor of caramel and berries/fruit. Despite the flavor, it doesn't look like a milkshake. It is a pink drink served with ice.

Sami - First week at Singapore

Before I talk about my experiences, I'll give some basics about who I am. Also a bit of a warning: My writing may not be exactly short. Plus my post will be lacking in pictures.
Anyway, about me: Sami, a game graphics student from Kajaani University of Applied Sciences, off to be an exchange student after my first year in KUAS.
Eager to learn 3D art, mostly worked in 2D thus far.
A sample of my works: HERE

As I began my first student year, I already decided that I'll take everything I can from the few years, Thus I was eager to sign up for the exchange programs that were available. I picked Singapore and the Netherlands as my priority targets, giving me over a year of time abroad.
Needless to say I got picked for Singapore, but as of this writing some things are a little shady about the period over at the Netherlands. All I know right now is that I got accepted for that as well, just need to work out the details. I'll write about both experiences on this blog.

Departure and Arrival

As I got accepted and got all the paperwork done, it was time to decide how the flight should be arranged. Teemu (A fellow exchange student from KUAS, programmer and fellow blog writer) and I decided to get us to Singapore and back on a budget, so we picked a flight arranged by Turkish Airlines. A 17 hour trip with one (about 3 hour) transfer in Istanbul, with the departure being in the evening of 1.6.2015. The food was alright and the flights in general were pleasant. A thing of note about your luggage is that you should keep all things in the large compartments of your suitcase/duffel bag/etc. I lost my sunscreen and hygiene related things since I put them in a smaller section of my bag. Not to mention the strange disappearance of a few pairs of underwear.

We (That is a total of five students from the same flight) arrived at the Singapore airport nearing the evening of 2.6., and made way towards our accommodation via taxi. We didn't have much of a plan since the instructions we were given were vague at best. "Come to Nanyang Polytechnic." It was late, so we figured it'd be better to go straight for the housing, and we were lucky to run into a group of engineer students that arrived earlier. I and Teemu were split from the other three students as reservations were made before our arrival, I and Teemu would share housing with four engineers.

First Week

The next morning we headed for the actual campus and our working area. The school is quite large, so it'll take a while to get used to.

We got placed in our seperate teams, I, Teemu and Eero (producer/designer) were put to work on one project with five other people, one of whom is yet to arrive. I'm not certain how much I can talk about the project itself just now, but I'll talk about some of the things that happen during the project and what I do without putting out any information I shouldn't be sharing.

Because we are still awaiting the last team member, we can't do too much, it's mostly been brainstorming and conceptualizing some ideas. The programmers have been setting up a basic framework and our producer has set up some things to keep track of progress.

Most of the week was about getting used to the weather and local area and getting our accommodation deals signed and keys handed. The way traffic works and streets are laid out are vastly different from what I'm used to, so navigation is something to get used to as well.

The first difficulty was and still is finding regular milk. Everything's processed, soy based or flavoured somehow. The local food culture is nice though, there's plenty to pick from and the prices aren't as hefty as I thought they would be. A canned or bottled soda is a dollar or so and a modest meal ranges from two dollars to three. To put this in perspective, one euro is roughly 1,5 Singapore dollars. When going even cheaper, you can do as we do and get packed noodles to cook up in house. But going out for a meal is not a hassle if you don't mind walking a bit in warm weather. I'm planning on trying as many different foods and drinks as I can.

I can say that coming over here is a good idea if you're out of shape and/or need to lose weight. I'm a big guy and the daily routine added in to the weather really makes me spend a lot of energy. I am certain I will lose weight and feel more energetic when leaving Singapore. Just have to remember to keep myself very well hydrated.

On Friday, all KUAS students got their Visa applications finished up, so we no longer need to think about anything else than keeping our hands on our identity cards. We also got our metro tickets. The system is pretty neat, and now it's really easy to get around Singapore. How ever, if you thought you need to wait for a long time with applications and meetings at KELA or the workforce office in Finland and you think it's very mind-numbing, you haven't seen anything yet. If you have a mobile console at hand, you'll be fine though. Afterwards we had lunch and went to see some shops. Game stores were high on the interest list, and we found a few. most of them small shops that also offer figurines, manga and some other really cool stuff. I picked up the art book for Assassin's Creed Unity for two dollars.

As the weekend arrived, so did the exhaustion and I got a little sick. Might be that the bacteria base and other changes caused me to have fever Friday night and my stomach had issues all weekend. But that's fair enough, a bit of rest at the end of the week is fine, there's plenty of things to do later on.

Think that'll do for the first post. Maybe I'll work on a reference list for things to check out and foods to try as well as things to keep in mind. There's quite a few lists of laws to remember, and you might want to keep caution in certain cases, but I don't think I'll get to that in detail unless I end up having some sort of adventurous experience with it.